and-white, dwarfed by the huge iron space around them. Judy bent over Miss Rose, peering at her through the transparent body bag, trying to hold eye contact with her. It was no use: the old woman’s eyes were closed, her mouth stretched wide, the thin tired scream emerging from it carried to them through the hoods of their active suits.
“Saskia? Is that you?”
Maurice sounded as if he was standing just next to them.
“Maurice? I can’t see you?”
“I’m with Edward. We’re floating inside the hull of a ship. I think it’s the
Saskia looked around. “I think we must be in there with you. Listen, we’ve set our active suits to stick us to the walls. Can you walk here and join us? Miss Rose is hurt.”
“I can hear that,” Maurice said.
Judy wasn’t listening. She watched as the skin on Miss Rose’s leg was slowly unzipped from the ankle up to the thigh, silver legs reaching through to encircle the limb.
Saskia’s voice sounded hoarse in her ear. “Kill her.”
Judy looked up at Saskia, face dark in her hood, the surrounding blackness of the
“Kill her,” repeated Saskia, “like you did that little girl. Can’t you see she’s in agony?”
Judy nodded. She placed her hands on the body bag, pinching it closer to Miss Rose’s head, wriggling her fingers through folds of plastic until she could grip the old woman’s neck. She began to squeeze. Then a voice sounded inside the hood of her active suit.
“Why are you doing that?”
It was a voice from her past—a voice that Judy’s iron will had kept on the edge of her dreams for the past twelve years. Hearing it now, even in the midst of all this confusion, Judy was momentarily back in the calm of her bedroom on the day she had listened to the dying digital sighs of her sisters.
“Kevin!” Judy released her grip on Miss Rose. She swung around, looking for the one who had spoken. Saskia had backed away. She was watching her companion warily.
“I’m sorry?” said the voice. “Have we met before?”
Judy had dropped into a fighting stance.
“You, or one of your copies,” she snarled. “Let her go, Kevin. Get those things out of her.”
“I can’t. They are their own creatures.” He sounded puzzled. “Tell me, how do you know me?”
Judy wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of answering him directly. She spoke instead to Saskia.
“Do you know that somebody killed my sisters, Saskia? Did Maurice tell you that?”
“Yes,” said Saskia warily.
“It was Kevin,” spat Judy, “or an aspect of him, anyway. Kevin, you are the
She didn’t have time for this. Miss Rose was dying in agony…And yet she had been in this situation before. Maybe Kevin wouldn’t have killed her sisters if she had agreed to his terms back then, however abhorrent they may have seemed. Maybe this time she could strike a deal that would save Miss Rose. Kevin spoke. “Yes, I am the
“Kevin is an AI written by DIANA, the company who built the
“Kevin, I knew copies of you back on Earth. I hunted them down and bottled them up in quarantined processing spaces. Do you know why I did that? Because they wanted me to help them destroy the Watcher and I refused. Well, understand this. I am being taken to Earth now, I don’t know why, but I suspect that someone is engineering the same confrontation that your brothers wanted. Someone wants me to challenge the Watcher.”
“I’m listening,” Kevin said, sounding amused. He always sounded amused.
